Friday, 30 November 2007

The insanity of Islam has been confirmed by the news that a Sudanese court has convicted Brit. teacher Gillian Gibbons of insulting religion and sentenced her to 15 days in jail, allegedly for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad (title link). This has been widely misreported (CLICK for the BBC Magazine's daft "What can't be named Muhammad?" article). So you may have missed the point that this is an art story. It wasn't the naming of the teddy that caused the arrest, but the project book for the children's entries about the bear. This had a picture of the teddy on the cover entitled "My name is Muhammad" (CLICK). Any depiction of the Prophet is taboo. (Remember the insane riots over those Danish cartoons, which convinced sensible people everywhere that Muslims are an extremely dangerous and volatile mob? CLICK, CLICK.) The teddy bear book was seized as proof that an image of the Prophet had been perpetrated. Take this lunacy to its logical conclusion and you will see the danger to artists, to photographers and even to cameramen. Produce an image of any man or boy called Muhammad and you have broken strict Islamic law!